Machines for forming food products from a food base feed stock are well known. Most such machines form the products in wafers, patties or other forms that in no way resembles a familiar form for a part of the stock from which the feed stock was produced. In many cases the formed product is merely a compaction of the feed stock in a form that is most easily formed by the machine or a form that is stamped or cut from a sheet of feed stock.
Various methods and machines have been developed over the years for shaping food materials to enhance their value and marketability. Some of those methods have utilized the single rotary concept with forming cavities in one roll only with another roll serving only as an applicator roll and functioning only to fill the cavities in the forming roll and to compress the feed material. In all such machines known to the present inventor, the forming cavities are an integral part of the roll structure and changes in the forming cavities are only effected by changing the entire forming roll. Those machines with the forming cavity as an integral part of the roll structure have had the limitation of forming only two dimensional products, and a lack of versatility in changing from one product form to another, and for those reasons those machines have been uneconomic in serving the food forming industry.
It has become desireable to form food articles in three dimensional forms that resemble a part of the source of the feed stock. For instance, it is desireable to form chicken feed stock in the form of drum sticks or breasts, or to form fish feed stock in the form of small fish, or to form shrimp feed stock in the form of shrimp.
Food processors do not wish to have machines dedicated to the formation of a single food product and would prefer to have a machine that can be easily adapted or changed from forming one product into a machine for forming another product. Quick changes from one form to another form are desireable, not only because quick changes are less labor intensive but also because the time taken to effect the change reduces the time spent in the formation of food products.
In light of these desires within the food product forming industry there has developed a need for a universal food product forming machine that may be adapted to the formation of many different food products with the changes between food products being made easily and with a minimum of equipment.
The object of the present invention is a method for forming three dimensional food products from a feed stock of food materials with a machine that is adapted to form a variety of food forms and is adapted to be changed from one food form to another with a minimum of effort and time.
A further object in accord with the preceding object is a food forming machine that will form three dimensional food objects from a feed stock and will take an input of compressible feed stock, form that stock into the desired product, and eject the formed product from the forming machine.
A further object in accord with the preceding objects is a rotary food product forming machine that will continuously receive feed stock, form the stock into a desired form, and eject the formed stock from the rotary machine in preparation for the formation of the next food product.